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The Wilderness Act of 1964 (Public Law 88-577) created the legal definition of wilderness in the United States, and protected some 9 million acres (36,000 km²) of federal land. The result of a long effort to protect federal wilderness, the Wilderness Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 3, 1964.
The Wilderness Act is well known for its succinct and poetic definition of wilderness:
...an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.
When Congress passed and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act on September 3, 1964, it created our National Wilderness Preservation System. The initial statutory wilderness areas, designated in the Act, comprised 9.1 million acres (37,000 km²) of national forest wilderness areas previously protected by administrative orders.
Statistics
Today, the Wilderness System comprises over 106 million acres (429,000 km²) involving federal lands administered by four agencies, as shown on this table.
| The National Wilderness Preservation System: Area Administered by each Federal Agency (July 2004) |
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| Agency | Wilderness area | Percent of agency land designated wilderness |
| National Park Service | 43,616,250 acres (176,508 km²) | 56% |
| U.S. Forest Service | 34,867,591 acres (141,104 km²) | 18% |
| U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service | 20,699,108 acres (83,766 km²) | 22% |
| Bureau of Land Management | 6,512,227 acres (26,354 km²) | 2% |
| Total | 105,695,176 acres (427,733 km²) | 17% |
DATA SOURCES |
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| Table from The Enduring Wilderness: Protecting Our Natural Heritage through the Wilderness Act (Fulcrum Publishing, 2004). Wilderness area by agency from www.wilderness.net. For consistency, all data used for percentage calculation are from Federal Land Management Agencies: Background on Land and Resource Management (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, RL30867, February 2001) | ||
Legal framework
The most important thing about the Wilderness Act is that when Congress designates each wilderness area, it includes a very specific boundary line—in statutory law. Once a wilderness area has been added to the System, its protection and boundary can only be altered by another act of Congress. That places a heavy burden on anyone who, all through the future, may propose some change.
The basics of the program set out in the Wilderness Act are straightforward:
- The lands protected as wilderness are areas of our public lands.
- Wilderness designation is a protective overlay Congress applies to selected portions of national forests, parks, wildlife refuges, and other public lands.
- Within wilderness areas, we strive to restrain human influences so that ecosystems can change over time in their own way, free, as much as possible, from human manipulation. In these areas, as the Wilderness Act puts it, “the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man”—untrammeled meaning the forces of nature operate unrestrained and unaltered.
- Wilderness areas serve multiple uses. But the law limits uses to those consistent with the Wilderness Act mandate that each wilderness area be administered to preserve the “wilderness character of the area.” For example, these areas protect watersheds and clean-water supplies vital to downstream municipalities and agriculture, as well as habitats supporting diverse wildlife, including endangered species, while logging and oil and gas drilling are prohibited.
- Along with many other uses and values for the American people, wilderness areas are popular for diverse kinds of outdoor recreation—but without motorized or mechanical vehicles or equipment. Wilderness is the haven of quiet beyond the end of the road, the wild sanctuary we meet on its own terms by leaving the machinery of twenty-first-century life behind. The wild popularity of wilderness recreation shows how hungry Americans are for just such sanctuaries.
Future legislation
This is not all the wilderness that Americans will choose to preserve on their public lands. Congress considers additional proposals every year, some recommended by federal agencies and many proposed by grassroots conservation and sportsmen’s organizations.
This fall Congress is actively working on bipartisan bills to designate new wilderness areas in Washington State, California, Virginia, Idaho, and New Hampshire. Grassroots coalitions are working with local congressional delegations on legislative proposals for additional wilderness areas in many other states, including Vermont, southern Arizona, national grasslands in South Dakota, Rocky Mountain peaks of Montana, Colorado and Wyoming, the U.S. Forest Service has recommended new wilderness designations (which citizen groups may propose to expand) in some of these places and others.
Source
- This article is adapted from The Enduring Wilderness: Protecting Our Natural Heritage through the Wilderness Act, a Campaign for America's Wilderness book by Doug Scott published in August 2004 by Fulcrum Publishing.
See also
External links
- Campaign for America's Wilderness (political advocacy)
- Full text of the Wilderness Act
- Protect California's Remaining Wilderness
Protected areas of the United States | United States federal public land legislation | Wilderness Areas of the United States
"Wilderness Act"